Adaptive Reuse: From Newspaper Printing Plant To Data Center

Gail Kalinoski’s piece in Commercial Property Executive focuses on a big adaptive reuse story in Chicago. At 317,000 SF, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper built for the future, but not the future of newsprint. Its printing presses fell largely silent and its need for logistics fell away as demand for daily news printed on paper was obliterated by the world wide web.

Built in 1999 and shuttered twelve years later, the facility is seeing new economic life ironically by giving shelter to the very technology that closed the property at first. The plant is now a thriving data center, still dedicated to distributing information, albeit bits and bytes.

Owned by QTS Realty Trust, an international operator of data centers, the building went through a reported $80M retrofit to make the conversion from distributor of dead trees to modern computing marvel:

The first phase has been completed and features 48,000 square feet of raised floor and associated critical power. When fully developed, the building will support a total of 133,000 square feet of raised floor encompassing 24 megawatts of power. QTS said it has the ability to add 213,000 square feet of raised floor and 32 megawatts in Building 2 for a total of 346,000 square feet of raised floor and 56 megawatts of power within the campus at 2800 S. Ashland Ave.

The company is planning an open house on July 15 to showcase the Phase One completion.

“We are pleased to formally open our new Chicago data center that extends our platform delivering a broad selection of integrated IT infrastructure services for Chicago and nationally,” Dan Bennewitz, COO of sales and marketing at QTS, said in a prepared statement. “We are focused on a collaborative, high-touch enterprise approach serving the dynamic needs of today’s agile enterprises seeking a partner that can right-size flexible and scalable IT solutions for today and tomorrow.”